Top investigator wants to restore death penalty ‘as preventive measure’

The head of Russia’s Investigative Committee has asked MPs to consider the return of capital punishment in Russian law, but noted he wasn’t seeking actual executions, but the psychological effect that such a threat could have on potential criminals.

“The topic of execution is currently a taboo in our
country,” Aleksandr Bastrykin told a group of MPs he had
invited for a conference in his office. “I am not suggesting
to restore the actual death penalty, but I think that it must be
present in our legislation as the hypothetical possibility of
such an outcome can stop a potential criminal,” he added.

The death penalty is currently present in the Russian Criminal
Code, but legislators introduced a moratorium on it in 1997, when
the country signed the Convention on Human Rights and Freedoms, a
necessary step for entering the Council of Europe.

However, some politicians and law enforcers have repeatedly
called for the return of capital punishment, especially in
response to heinous crimes and large-scale terrorist attacks. In
February last year, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said
that it would be “society’s normal reaction” as he was
commenting on the brutal murders of two small girls. The top
Russian policeman stressed that this was his personal opinion.

Kolokoltsev’s words prompted comments from top officials, who
assured the public that there were no plans to reintroduce the
death penalty. Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov,
said the president’s position on the issue is established, fixed
and consistent, adding that in his view Putin was more in favor
of a total abolition of the death penalty.

Lower House Speaker Sergey Naryshkin told reporters that he was
against the return of capital punishment and the press service of
the Prosecutor General’s Office noted that Russia had obligations
to the Council of Europe and therefore the moratorium would
remain.

According to a poll conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation in
September 2013, 68 percent of Russians thought that death
sentences were acceptable in principle, while 24 percent answered
that the measure was totally inadmissible. According to the same
poll, 91 percent of citizens described suicide as completely
unacceptable, and 34 percent said the same about
medically-assisted euthanasia.

The head of the International Institute of Political Expertize
think tank, Yevgeniy Minchenko, told the Kommersant daily this
week that he considered the return of the death penalty was a
possibility, as the moratorium was introduced in order to please
Europe and today most Russians no longer want to heed European
opinion.

The government representative in the Supreme, Constitutional and
the Supreme Arbitration Courts, Mikhail Barshevskiy, told the RBC
news agency that as a lawyer he could not understand Bastrykin’s
position. “If he wants it to be applied, this is impossible
because of the Constitutional Court ruling, if he wants it to be
present in the criminal code – it is there already,” the
agency quoted the lawyer as saying.